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To Bristol's fount I bore with trembling care
Her faded form; she bow'd to taste the wave,
And died! Does youth, does beauty, read the
line?

Does sympathetic fear their breasts alarm? Speak, dead Maria! breathe a strain divine; Even from the grave thou shalt have power to charm.

Bid them be chaste, be innocent, like thee;
Bid them in duty's sphere as meekly move;
And if so fair, from vanity as free;

As firm in friendship, and as fond in love. Tell them, though 'tis an awful thing to die, ('Twas even to thee) yet the dread path once trod,

Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high,

And bids "the pure in heart behold their
God."

THOMAS WARTON.

BORN 1728-DIED 1790.

THE historian of English poetry was descended of a respectable Yorkshire family. Both his father and brothers were poets of some note. Warton entered Oxford at the age of sixteen, obtained a degree, and soon afterwards a fellowship, and for forty-seven years continued a distinguished member of the university. His lettered leisure was entirely devoted to poetry and antiquities; and his Observations on the Faery Queen and History of Poetry

remain stupendous monuments of his enthusiasm, industry, and talents. The history, though incomplete at the death of the author, has formed the text-book of every succeeding writer on English literature. Warton was long professor of poetry-an office to which he had every claim. He was afterwards (in 1785) made Camden professor of history, and obtained the laureateship. Warton is represented by his biographer, Dr Mant, as fonder of a pot of ale, a pipe of tobacco, and what is called vulgar society, than beseems the dignity of the Muses, though probably not more so than was Prior, Swift, and Fielding, of one or all of those delights. It is related, that when he was wont to leave his classic cell to visit his brother Joseph, he contrived to become the confidant and playmate of half the schoolboys of Winchester, where Mr Joseph Warton was second master. When engaged with the boys in cooking clandestine banquets, he used to skulk like the other culprits when the step of the master was heard, and has been dragged from his lurking-place, mistaken for a great boy. He used to assist in the literary tasks of the Winchester boys, as well as in their culinary operations, taking care to throw as many blunders into their school-exercises as might deceive his learned brother. The poet of Richard and Prince Arthur, the historian of Chaucer and Spenser, of English romance and chivalry, must have been a very good-natured and delightful person.

Warton decidedly possesses much of the Gothic imagination, martial spirit, and minstrel enthusiasm, which have since been so powerfully developed by later bards; and there. can be no doubt but that his learned and attractive volumes have tended, with the Reliques of Percy, to resuscitate the genuine spirit of English romantic poetry. He died in his college at the age of sixty-two.

ON SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS' PAINTED
WINDOW AT OXFORD.

YE brawny Prophets, that in robes so rich,
At distance due, possess the crisped niche;
Ye rows of Patriarchs, that, sublimely rear'd,
Diffuse a proud primeval length of beard:
Ye Saints, who, clad in crimson's bright array,
More pride than humble poverty display:
Ye Virgins meek, that wear the palmy crown
Of patient faith, and yet so fiercely frown:
Ye Angels, that from clouds of gold recline,
But boast no semblance to a race divine:
Ye tragic Tales of legendary lore,

That draw devotion's ready tear no more;
Ye Martyrdoms of unenlighten'd days,
Ye Miracles, that now no wonder raise;
Shapes, that with one broad glare the gazer strike,
Kings, bishops, nuns, apostles, all alike!
Ye Colours, that the unwary sight amaze,
And only dazzle in the noontide blaze!
No more the sacred window's round disgrace,
But yield to Grecian groups the shining space.
Lo! from the canvass Beauty shifts her throne,
Lo! Picture's powers a new formation own!
Behold, she prints upon the crystal plain,
With her own energy, the expressive stain !
The mighty Master spreads his mimic toil
More wide, nor only blends the breathing oil;
But calls the lineaments of life complete
From genial alchymy's creative heat;
Obedient forms to the bright fusion gives,
While in the warm enamel Nature lives.

Reynolds, 'tis thine, from the broad window's

height,

To add new lustre to religious light:

Not of its pomp to strip this ancient shrine,
But bid that pomp with purer radiance shine:
With arts unknown before, to reconcile
The willing Graces to the Gothic pile.

THE HAMLET,

AN ODE.

THE hinds how blest, who ne'er beguiled
To quit their hamlet's hawthorn wild,
Nor haunt the crowd, nor tempt the main,
For splendid care, and guilty gain !

When morning's twilight-tinctured beam
Strikes their low thatch with slanting gleam,
They rove abroad in ether blue,

To dip the scythe in fragrant dew;
The sheaf to bind, the beech to fell,
That nodding shades a craggy dell.

Midst gloomy glades, in warbles clear,
Wild nature's sweetest notes they hear :
On green untrodden banks they view
The hyacinth's neglected hue :

In their lone haunts, and woodland rounds,
They spy the squirrel's airy bounds;
And startle from her ashen spray,
Across the glen, the screaming jay :
Each native charm their steps explore
Of Solitude's sequester'd store.

For them the moon with cloudless ray
Mounts, to illume their homeward way :
Their weary spirits to relieve,

The meadows incense breathe at eve.
No riot mars the simple fare,

That o'er a glimmering hearth they share :
But when the curfew's measured roar
Duly, the darkening valleys o'er,
Has echoed from the distant town,
They wish no beds of cygnet-down,
No trophied canopies, to close
Their drooping eyes in quick repose.

Their little sons, who spread the bloom
Of health around the clay-built room,
Or through the primrosed coppice stray,
Or gambol in the new-mown hay;
Or quaintly braid the cowslip-twine,
Or drive afield the tardy kine;
Or hasten from the sultry hill,
To loiter at the shady rill;

Or climb the tall pine's gloomy crest,
To rob the raven's ancient nest.

Their humble porch with honey'd flowers
The curling woodbine's shade embowers:
From the small garden's thymy mound
Their bees in busy swarms resound:
Nor fell Disease, before his time,
Hastes to consume life's golden prime :
But when their temples long have wore
The silver crown of tresses hoar;
As studious still calm peace to keep,
Beneath a flowery turf they sleep.

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